Stella Artois has launched a viral ad campaign for its 4% lager featuring spoof trailers for US films and TV shows, shot in the style of French Nouvelle Vague directors such as Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut.

One of the online ads is a spoof trailer for Kiefer Sutherland drama 24, shot in the style of Godard's Pierrot le Fou, with laid-back lothario Jacques Bauder ignoring warnings that he has only 24 hours to save St Tropez.

Other spoof trailers in the Stella 4% campaign, created by ad agency Mother London, feature Bruce Deville playing Jean Meqlain in "Dial Hard", and "8 Kilometre", in which two duelling literati face off in a war of words in a French jazz club.

The 24 spoof, "24 Hours", opens with the line: "The following takes place between two o'clock and, ah, some time after lunch."

Bauder, lounging around in his St Tropez appartment, ignores his lady friend's increasingly desperate pleas for him to take action, saying "Saving the world is so ... bourgeois".

"Watch the movies that Hollywood didn't want you to see," runs the endline to the spoof trailer, with a link to a Stella Artois website hosting the trailers and a longer version of each spoof viral trailer.

The three viral clips will be supported by a month-long targeted online ad campaign on websites including Channel 4, Guardian Film, Virgin Media movies, Empire and IMDB.

Stella will also launch a series of homepage takeovers of websites including MSN, Total Film, GQ and Rotten Tomatoes.

Mother's first TV ad for the brand featured a lothario who gets into strife attempting to seduce another man's girlfriend but stylishly makes a smooth getaway.

"We have built on this scene by taking a wry look at how it could have inspired three Hollywood classics and influenced a smooth outcome," said Andreas Hilger, the marketing director of InBev UK and Ireland.

"The strong cinematic look will appeal to film buffs who know their cinematic history as well as to the wider public".

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